The Truth Behind High Housing Prices in the Greater Golden Horseshoe

ONTARIO GREENBELT ALLIANCE and THE OAK RIDGES MORAINE PARTNERSHIP

Today the Ontario Home Builders Association (OHBA) is at Queen’s Park trying to convince the Premier and her Cabinet that environmental laws designed to protect precious agricultural and natural lands are responsible for high housing prices.

They are wrong. That is why we have sent this letter to MPPs to tell the truth behind high housing prices.

Like other people living in the Greater Golden Horseshoe (GGH), we are also concerned with the lack of affordable housing supply in the GGH.

If the OHBA is serious about building homes that are affordable for Ontarians, they need to answer the following two questions:

What is holding them back from building on the 100,000 hectares of land already earmarked for development (greater than the size of Mississauga and Toronto combined)?

How much new home construction are they planning to build that will be designed to be affordable and close to where people want to live?

The home affordability crisis has nothing to do with lack of available land. If it did, there would not be 100,000 hectares of land available for development today. It’s time the development industry came clean with Ontarians and explained why they aren’t building affordable homes on the huge amounts of available lands.